Why We Homeschool ("The Veronica Maria Edition")

The unfurled banners stating FULL-DAY KINDERGARTEN in bold, screaming colors had been taunting me for months. Wherever I turned, mothers of five-year-olds congregated to discuss, with the seriousness and deliberation of chess players, which schools were blue-ribboned or offered bilingual instruction or art classes.

“And where is your daughter going?” they’d ask me.

“I don’t know.” And then, feeling embarrassed, I’d add, “Yet. I don’t know yet. But I will. (pause) Soon. Eventually. I’m weighing our options.”

Weighing our options meant that I had looked at every school within our section of the state in the threadbare hope of a half-day kindergarten. (I found none.) And then I checked the cost of local Catholic schools. (Too expensive.) And so full-day kindergarten in public school seemed my only choice. But I hated that choice.

My cherub-faced little girl was going to be away from me for almost the entire waking day.

But We Like Spending Time With Her

Everyone told me that my daughter would be fine, that she’d get used to it, that she wouldn’t need me too much. Everyone reminded me that I’d gone to school and actually did well. “She’ll get used to it.”

Yes, but I wouldn’t. I had one big fat reason why all-day kindergarten bothered me. I couldn’t pretend to like the fact that she would be away from her beloved baby brother and me for the entire day. My husband and I had been guiding and educating this little child for four years and nine months, and now, we’d have to hand her heart, soul and waking hours over to strangers. Maybe they were nice strangers, but no one could love her more than us. No one else knew our child’s needs and temperament and character better than we do.

We’d fed, clothed and nurtured her for almost five years. With our guidance, she had learned how to walk, feed herself, go potty in the right place, her prayers, Bible stories, colors, shapes, manners, etc. We were teaching her about the Lord, sharing the faith, living it together, and now, her days would be centered on something different during these prime formative years. And the child whose life was shared with me would go and have adventures at the ripe age of five, adventures that I’d only know about second-hand, if that.

All the fun activities that we regularly did, such as nature centers and parks and dinner with a beloved auntie, would be done without her. While the rest of us went to libraries for story time or walked along the pier or studied butterflies in the field, my energetic, spirited girl would be inside. In a classroom. For the full day.

Eureka!

In a parent-education course I took, everything was going swimmingly until the subject of kindergarten once more reared its head. This time, however, another mom said the unexpected: “We’re going to home school.”

Home school?

Later that day, I told my husband, “Someone in class today said she was going to home school her kids.” And my husband said, “Great! Why don’t we do that then?”

Even though I’d not read one word about homeschooling nor had a clue of where to begin, I felt a sudden joy and excitement at the word. Something in me just shouted, “Eureka!”

From that moment on, I started reading everything I could about homeschooling and various philosophies regarding home education. I’ve read about classical, eclectic, unschooling, Charlotte Mason, Maria Montessori, John Gatto, John Holt, etc. Then I sought support on online homeschooling message boards, where I met mentors on this crazy journey.

That September, we launched into homeschooling, with much fear and trembling and the hope of doing what was best for us. Since that moment, homeschooling has been the greatest gift to our family. Yes, there are bleak days, but the sunshine-filled ones outnumber them a thousand times over. I’ve found joy and wonder as part of a homeschooling family.

The Reasons Multiply

I began homeschooling because I love my daughter and did not want to have her away from me for such long periods of time.

The reasons why I continue homeschooling, however, have increased manifold since we started homeschooling in 2005: Homeschooling offers my children the best education of their hearts and minds and souls. They get to learn more about their Catholic faith and the life of the Church and see the world around them from a Catholic perspective. Homeschooling allows them to learn in an environment that supports their learning style, letting them thrive in their favorite subjects and receive focused assistance in challenging areas. Their learning is not limited to certain hours, but their education is seeped into all that we do. Through our local home school group, my children have made good friends with children whose values are the same ones we cherish yet who represent a diversity of cultures and personalities so it teaches them to stretch beyond their world. My children get to play during their best hours of the day and participate in the daytime world rather than remain hidden in a brick-and-mortar school. My children are each other’s best friends. My children listen to their parents as the primary authority rather than my handing that authority to schoolteachers or principals.

The short answer of why we home school is best summarized by Elizabeth Foss in her book, “Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home”: [Home education] is educating the heart of a child within a family. It is not being confined in the basement or dining room of a house, plodding through a workbook. It is living together and learning about each other and challenging one another to greater heights … We keep them at home to nurture them, to cultivate relationships with them and to plant the seeds of relationships with people and their ideas. We keep them at home to equip them to embrace and to shape the world of their Creator.”

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Veronica Maria has a degree in journalism and worked with words for years before she became a full-time mom. She writes about homeschooling at her blog, Pixilated School Notes, and freelances as a writer and an editor. Her most-beloved works-in-progress, though, are her three children.

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